Date: Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:58:03 +0000

Jim and others,

I agree that this is a very good series. To answer your question, we don’t publicize these in a special way except perhaps to highlight them in course- or subject-related guides (we use LibGuides from Springshare). Also, we don’t shelve them together.

But the main reason I’m writing is to take issue with your choice of words: “…I worry that they would disappear into our OPAC and be essentially invisible.” I think you were focusing on a way to highlight the series as a set and to make them more visible, physically — but putting these in the OPAC is precisely a way that will help to draw attention to them. And they are easily collocated in most OPACs by series title (“Very Short Introductions”). Just typing in the words “very short introductions” into a keyword search in our OPAC brings them readily together.

Over twenty five years of work in a wide variety of large and small academic libraries, as well as a large corporate library, has shown me that one of the best ways to ensure use of library materials is for them to be properly cataloged. I’m including e-resources in this, not just print and other traditional formats. Over and over again, I can point to cases where usage was low _until_ cataloging was done and the material was readily findable in the OPAC, and then usage took off. Somehow it still seems to surprise. It shouldn’t.

There are of course larger philosophical issues at play and I have never held the view that the OPAC — or even our discovery layer — is the center of the universe for our users to find everything they want. It isn’t, and it hasn’t been for a long time. But it _is_ still a critical source of information and exposure for our materials, one that we should not overlook.

Steve

Steve Oberg
Assistant Professor of Library Science
Electronic Resources and Serials
Wheaton College (IL)
+1 (630) 752-5852

NASIG Vice-President/President-Elect

On Jan 23, 2017, at 7:04 PM, LIBLICENSE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

From: "Jim O'Donnell" <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Sat, 21 Jan 2017 07:35:25 -0700

Oxford Press publishes a series of useful and smart paperbacks under
the "Very Short Introductions" rubric: 502 volumes at last count on
topics like:

Buddhist Ethics, Cancer, Catholicism, Chaos, Children's Literature,
Chinese Literature, Choice Theory, Christian Art, Citizenship, Civil
Engineering, Classics, Clausewitz, Climate

They sell for about $8 each on Amazon. A license for digital access
for a campus might cost as much as a complete print set I'm guessing.
They're very well done and offer an appreciably-better-than-Google
introduction to a wide variety of subjects. But I worry that they
would disappear into our OPAC and be essentially invisible. I'd be
tempted to buy the full print set and shelve them together in a
visible place: interesting if that were a way to make the print
version get more use than digital would.

So I write now to ask if anyone knows of library experience promoting
this series, either digital or print.

Jim O'Donnell
Arizona State University